Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers

The Lakers opened the preseason without a lot of rotation players in uniform (no Luka Dončić, LeBron James, Marcus Smart and Gabe Vincent), and it certainly looked liked they missed them. 

While there were some good individual performances, as a group the Lakes were sloppy and couldn't make a bucket to save their lives (31 percent overall, 17 percent from downtown), losing to Phoenix 103-81. Austin Reaves played will in his minutes,...

It's been a mantra for JJ Redick since the Lakers lost Game 5 against the Timberwolves in the first round of last year's playoffs—everyone needs to come back with championship level fitness. 

At the time, while people certainly applied it to the team at large, it was also seen as a message for Luka Dončić. To whatever extent it was, it's pretty clear Luka took the message to heart, given what he did with his body this offseason. But...

The Lakers open the preseason on Friday, and while there are plenty of issues to work out, and plenty of time to do it, it's not too early to get a feel for what the rotation could look like. 

Luka Dončić and LeBron James (who won't play Friday, but was doing individual drills on Wednesday) give the Lakers a ton of flexibility, based on having guard skills in forward bodies. Austin Reaves provides obvious guard skills as well. So th...

After a really fun first day of school (Media Day) the Lakers got down to work on Tuesday, and some of the shine came off the apple fairly quickly. 

Why? Health. 

First, LeBron James sat out with what JJ Redick described as "a little bit of nerve irritation in the glute." It's something the Lakers are obviously going to be careful with, and that could keep James on the sidelines for the full slate of preseason games as the Lakers wor...

Monday was the official start of the 2025-26 Lakers season, as Media Day hit El Segundo. 

It was a low key, mellow affair, with no drama to speak of, and little news to be made. This is a good thing, of course. Luka Dončić came to camp with a new contract in hand, and had very little to say that hadn't been said already. LeBron James put to bed any sense of dissatisfaction, showing serious enthusiasm and excitement for the upcoming ...

It's finally here, people! The 2025-26 season for the LA Lakers kicks off today with Media Day. In less than a week, the Lakers will be playing preseason games. 

And while they don't open as favorites in the West, the Lakers definitely do open with the expectation of being very good, and should be a fun team to watch. It is, in the eyes of many, the true beginning of the Luka Dončić era in Los Angeles. It's his first Media Day in a ...

It's time for another episode of the NBA Squad! Today we are breaking down the Houston Rockets' nightmare Fred VanVleet injury, what we want to see from NBA Media Days, whether or not the Oklahoma City Thunder can take another step up and more!

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The Lakers braintrust met the media on Thursday ahead of next week's kickoff of training camp. As is his custom, Rob Pelinka opened with a sort of state of the union. Talked about the positive summer, the excitement of new acquisitions, and of course the amazing Summer of Luka. 

And then he dropped the big piece of news, almost as a throwaway line at the end: Earlier in the offseason, the Lakers gave head coach JJ Redick a contract ...

With Brian out of town traveling, Aaron Larsuel, the former host of the Official Lakers Podcast, who's also worked for several NBA franchises (including the Lakers), drops by to offer thoughts on the upcoming season for the purple and gold. Together, they run through a bunch of overarching questions about this upcoming season, including...

- The starting lineup options

- Deandre Ayton's fit, on the court and culturally

- The "Summer o...

The Lakers have three starters everyone, from the org to fans to media all agree on. That would be Luka Dončić, Lebron James and Deandre Ayton. 

Austin Reaves is going to start, even though there's an active faction of Lakers fans who prefer he come off the bench. Sorry folks, that ain't happening. 

So that leaves a fifth spot, and presumably JJ Redick will be choosing between incumbent starter Rui Hachimura, and free agent acquisiti...

The Lakers are unquestionably a very good team, but aren't generally considered a top contender in the Western Conference. 

There's a path to get there, but it involves unfortunate things happening to the teams that (on paper at least) are a notch above them in the preseason pecking order. Well, Monday one of those things seems to have happened. Houston point guard Fred VanVleet suffered a major knee injury—a torn ACL—that will requ...

Rob Pelinka spoke with ESPN's Dave McMenamin last week, and needless to say had a tremendous amount of good stuff to say about new star Luka Dončić. Everything about this summer, McMenamin writes, has led Pelinka to believe the Lakers can do big things with Luka perhaps a little faster from a roster building standpoint than perhaps they originally thought. 

One big reason is Luka's offseason transformation, which either reinforces o...

It's a Pacific Division preview with (most of) the Locked On hosts from around the west coast... and Arizona! Which of these five teams is best positioned to rack up the most wins? The Lakers, with the most top-end players of the bunch? The Clippers, with the most pure depth? The Warriors, with a roster that was one Steph Curry injury away from, at minimum, making the 2025 Western Conference Finals? The Suns, with the--- just kiddi...

Fair to say people are fully invested in the LeBron James retirement tea leaves. 

So when he speaks about the subject, as he did this week on the 360 With Speedy show, it's going to get a lot of attention. And here, LeBron didn't reveal a ton, only (again) that he's (obviously) far closer to the end than the beginning. But to some ears, at least, you could hear hints that he's planning to stick around beyond this season, and overall...

ESPN's annual Future Rankings had been a sad place for Lakers fans over the last few years, even when things were going well for the team. 

The Lakers may have had potential in the present, but down the road, things were a lot trickier. Building around LeBron James and Anthony Davis, for a variety of reasons, came with ... complexities. 

Now, however, things are looking bright. Why? Because a team that has Luka Dončić not only gets a...

The Summer of Luka continues, this time with a profile in WSJ Magazine, the long form arm of The Wall Street Journal. 

It's both a player profile -- one confirming again that Luka does, in fact, look awesome, physically -- and a fashion spread. And as the writer Jason Gay notes, the two are related. Most guys aren't all that interested in the modeling (which in this case includes a shot in the cold tub) if they're not feeling good a...

Context is everything in sports. 

The Lakers have imported Deandre Ayton to be the new starting center, and it's an opportunity for him to change the conversation. Viewed by many as anywhere from a disappointment to a major disappointment to a bust, Ayton arrives in Los Angeles with a totally different set of expectations. Nobody in LA will look at him as a failed top pick, taken ahead of Luka Dončić. None of that matters. With the ...

On Friday, we discussed reports that the Lakers might be more inclined to make moves eating into cap space they've made potentially available for next offseason, or the summer following (when a few high profile stars could become available). Is that really a plan they're kicking around? Would they spend some capital, and some flexibility, to get a guy like Andrew Wiggins from Miami? 

And no question, this is in large part a Wiggins ...

Luka Dončić dominated Eurobasket, leading an undermanned Slovenia to the Round of 8. 

That performance, along with everything else we've seen in the Summer of Luka, might have been enough to get the Lakers to change their long-term plans. Or at least change the way they do PR around their long term plans. Dan Woike of The Athletic writes that the Lakers, who had been reportedly very, very protective of their cap flexibility going fo...